A new study made by a research team at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston has shown that asthma is strongly connected to child abuse and the children abused by their parents are the ones at greater risk to develop the respiratory problem.

1,200 children were asked questions by the researcher’s team. They were asked about their lives at home, their parent’s acting, what are the conditions in which they live and everything that could show an abuse disorder. The children were from Puerto Rico and many of them were physical or sexual abused.

20% of the children interviewed, who were abused, developed asthma. The study also proved that children who were abused were twice at risk to have the respiratory problem.

The traumatic events the children grow up surrounded by are the main factor in having asthma. The stressful environment is what made the kids get sick. 
“In fact, physical and sexual abuse was second only to maternal asthma in all the risk factors tested, including paternal asthma and indicators of socioeconomic status," said the American Thoracic Society.

Also Juan C. Celedón, M.D., Dr.P.H. of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, a principal investigator stated that they knew about the high “revalence of asthma in Puerto Rican children” and that many studies have connected stress and violence to children’s health problems, “including asthma.”

The abuse results from altering the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis in a way that it may depress the glucocorticoid response, decreasing suppression of airway inflammatory responses.